Site Editor Basics

The Site Editor is where you design everything in Ollie — pages, headers, footers, templates, styles, and menus — all with blocks, all visually. If you’re coming from classic themes or page builders, this is the one concept to learn first: with a block theme like Ollie, your entire site is editable in one place.

Opening the Site Editor

Go to Appearance → Editor in your WordPress dashboard. You’ll land in the Site Editor’s navigation, with your homepage previewed on the right.

The fastest way to move around WordPress, though, is the Command Palette: press ⌘K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows) anywhere in the admin and type where you want to go — “edit header,” a template name, a page. It jumps straight there.

The Main Areas

• Pages — browse and edit your site’s pages without leaving the editor.
• Templates — the layouts that control how content displays: your single post layout, archive pages, search results. Edit a template and every page using it updates.
• Patterns → Template Parts — reusable sections shared across templates, most importantly your header and footer. Edit one and it updates across every template that uses it. See Customizing Your Header and Footer.
• Patterns — pre-designed block sections (heroes, pricing, testimonials) you can drop into any page. Ollie ships more than 50, and Ollie Pro’s pattern library adds hundreds more.
• Styles — your site’s global design: typography, colors, spacing, and Ollie’s style variations. One change here cascades everywhere. See Global Styles.
• Navigation — create and manage your menus (and with Menu Designer, design full dropdown and mobile menus).

The Editing Toolbar

When you’re editing, the top toolbar gives you the block inserter (+), undo/redo, List View (a tree of every block on the page — invaluable in complex layouts), the command palette, and preview options for desktop, tablet, and mobile.

How It’s Different from a Page Builder

There’s no separate layer bolted onto WordPress — the Site Editor is WordPress. Everything you build is native blocks: fast, portable, and future-proof, with no shortcode lock-in and no builder-specific markup. Ollie’s job is to make that native experience feel as polished as any premium builder, with the design decisions already made for you.

Where to Go Next

1. Customize your header and footer — the first thing most site owners do.
2. Set up your Global Styles — brand colors and typography, applied site-wide.
3. Learn the pattern workflow — the fastest way to build pages.

For a deeper walkthrough of every corner of the Site Editor, read our full guide to the WordPress Site Editor.